AIBU to think this can’t be true are SEN numbers

[Marmite2021]

My dd’s school had pretty dire SATS results a year or two ago and they explained this by saying 20% of that year’s class had special educational needs and that the rest of the class had achieved above average attainment. Their ofsted report suggest they had below average numbers of SEN children and that the ones they did have were being fully supported and making good progress.
For starters 20% SEN pupils in one mainstream class seems extraordinarily high, and it that is “below average” what on Earth is the average??

[quote elliejjtiny]@itsgettingweird just curious but how are the outstanding schools wheedling the SEN children out? I've heard about this happening but I've found it really hard to get my dc a place in special needs school. Sometimes I wonder if I should just try and get him into an outstanding mainstream school and wait for him to be wheedled out to special school.[/quote]
Very carefully as issues now penalise off rolling.

Usually a very closed door. Lacking communication, lack of transparency. Usually systematically make sure breakdown of relationship very cleverly so it becomes parent who is the issue and parent feels need to remove child.

I've seen it happen to so many people I know.

But that's not to say it's all outstanding schools. You may pick one that's actually amazing with send (but that may just end up win win!)

Medical advances have also mean that children who might previously not survived are now doing so. My niece was born 5 months premature. In previous centuries, or even decades, she wouldn't have survived but thankfully she did, however she will always have special,educational needs.

FoxyTheFox
Even so, for the teacher to claim that they collectively brought the average class score down to -5, she is saying they collectively had a very low average.

Seems possible to me, DS's preschool has 4 kids out of 46 on the SEN register, with a few others showing signs (I know as DS is one of the 4, and has a mix of 1:1 and small group support, it came up when discussing how his support time is alocated/ shared). So it's already close to 10% and likely to rise, plus as his cohort are 3/4yo, the numbers don't even include things like dyslexia which will become apparent once they start learning to read and write. It could easily be 20% in 7 years time.

Interesting 3 of us answered the outstanding schools and send question and all have similar answers. Clearly it's still anecdotal but shows that there is definitely a pattern and a type of behaviour

Also included in that figure will be children who are in care or have been adopted, I know where I am care experienced children will be considered to have ASN (Scottish terminology for SEN) unless it’s evidenced that they don’t. I know in our school that pushes the number up because there are a good few adopted children and children in foster care.

My sons dyslexia wasn't assessed until year 6 and SATs time. In fact the whole of his year 6 time they were not actually taught any normal lessons it was all about how to pass the SATs. I was actually really angry as I didn't receive the report until into the summer holidays after he had left the school. His always had a high reading level (but doesn't enjoy reading) but poor handwriting. The school didn't actually tell me he was being assessed for Dyslexia just that they were checking in case he could be awarded extra time in the test. Sadly I think lots of schools have been made to feel that statistics and figures are much more important than the individual children and what they actually need.

As @BuggerBognor said, lazy stereotyping on the teacher's part to have disclosed that information and to have blamed them for that score. It sounds like you need to have a discussion with school about why the score is that.

A significant number of the children may have dyslexia and not a more severe sen. So if the scores of the sen children (autistic, downs etc) are removed then you have 4 children with dyslexia who don’t just do badly but do poorly ... their score will drag the average down considerably. Then you have two more with mild dyslexia or who were ill in the year or their parents split that year and so they did not do as expected... again the average as a whole drops significantly. Plus this year you will have maybe a quarter of the class whose parents didn’t keep up with home schooling, and the stats of the school are shot to hell.
Statistics are only any good up to a point. So long as your own child is making good progress that is the main thing.

I see what you mean OP - the numbers don't add up.

I am 43 op. I attended the same primary school that my 9yr old dd currently attends. She is in year 5. My 17yr old ds also attended there, as did both my brothers and all of my nieces and nephews and I have a good understanding of the school.

We have a way higher than average amount of children with SEN but as a pp said, this can mean anything from autism to severe learning difficulties and everything in between.

When I was there I was always “top of the class” with one other girl and I being pretty much level ability and the children were ranked every year which is horrible if you think about it. It was always me and the other girl at the top and several other children were always at the bottom. The same ones every single year.

Looking back and reflecting as an adult I can now see that many of my class ( mainly the boys ) really struggled and probably had some form of SEN but of course in the 80’s it wasn’t a “thing” and people were labeled otherwise such as “naughty” “thick” for example.

My ds has ASD. He smashed his SATs and GCSE’s and is currently studying for his A levels and has his sights set on a very prestigious establishment. SEN doesn’t mean that a child is stupid, far from it.

In my immediate family there are 8 children ( I have 2, 1 brother has 2 and the other brother has 4 ) and 6 of the 8 have SEN and range from my ds in mainstream 6th form to my youngest nephews non verbal and at a special school for autistic children.

We are becoming better as a society at accepting people and it’s no longer a stigma to have a diagnosis in my opinion. I was diagnosed last year with ADHD and have met so many others the same. Some of us slipped through the net. Others are more obvious.

Sorry for massive post.

@itsgettingweird and @modgepodge Thankyou. That's awful, it looks like my ds is better off where he is.

It's about 20% at My daughters school. Only one with a 1:1, though. She is one of the 6

Marmite2021

I do wonder if you're over-thinking this a bit, not to be rude.

It's vanishingly unlikely that 80* of the class achieved 'above expected' in the actual results; the head may have been referring to progress measures.

Have a look at the data on the DfE school performance website if you want to number crunch, but I'd take what the head said with a pinch of salt tbh and just focus on how your child is doing.

It is easily possible particular years have extreme levels of SEN. My DD is in year 1. When she started 24 out of 90 started school with identified special needs. Now in year 1 there are 3 with EHCPs, 3 mid ehcp assessment and about 23 SEN support. It is really unevenly skewed for her school as other years there ae just 1 or 2 ehcps. Just one of those things

In the inner London comp I taught at 2 children out of my form of 30 weren't on the SEN register.

I meant it's vanishing unlikely that 80% of the class achieved 'above expected' in the SATs.

And why do so many children have SEN? I mean in reality. Why do so many of our children have cognitive and/or physical issues that affect their learning? Is this just accepted as a normal level of disfunctiin in a population of children? I find it shiocking!

I don’t know what your question is here or what option there is other than to accept, recognise and support children with SEN? What alternative do you suggest to “accepting this as a normal level of dysfunction”?

And for the record, my children aren’t remotely dysfunctional - they need support to access the school curriculum, as is their right. Are you saying you don’t believe that all those children identified as having SEN actually have those support needs?

Having just quickly read some of the guidance to schools about SEN, I've come to the conclusion that I would, these days, fall into that category because of visual problems. Instead my DM just made sure the teachers at primary knew I had to sit at the front, closest to the blackboard. So I'd agree with pp that there have always been a lot of SEN children, just not labelled as such. I would have been very annoyed if a teacher had suggested I was bringing the class average downdown because of my eyesight, as I was one of the consistently high performers. Except back then teachers and schools were far more concerned with how we were all doing individually, rather than some arbitrary test score average imposed by government (and I suspect most teachers would still prefer to be!).

Unless the OP has both the KS1 and KS2 actual,scores for each individual child I'm not sure how she can calculate progress measures.

The school highlighting that may be wanting further support to help with children with SEN. If you feel they're blaming SEN unfairly, you could take it up with the governing board, LA, or academy trust - there are procedures.

Why there are so many depends on perspective. 'SEN' can include both diagnoseable conditions that affect access to the curriculum including visual, hearing, multi-sensory, physical disabilities, as well as social, emotional, and mental health reasons that create additional barriers to education, language and communication difficulties including things like stammers, and so on.

Remember, depending on definition and data collection methods, 15-20% of working-age adults in the UK have a disability. That may seem like a lot to some, but really, when we're including everything well above and beyond the narrow representation and availability with current support, it really isn't.

@Marmite2021

And does nobody else think that one in five children having special educational needs seem outrageous? We need to be asking why and not just accepting this as normal.

why is it outrageous?

Ds's outstanding school made his life an absolute misery. He had hardly any support and they refused to help him. He's now at a different school and has an EHCP (his old school said he wouldn't get one). Our relationship with them pretty much broke down completely

DS does not struggle academically but finds everything else in his life very difficult. He's predicted 3 A*s for his A Levels but he's unlikely to be able to cope with either Uni or work at 18. He is though finally getting support from staff that actually understand autism and that is far more important to us than any academic result.

The average across a primary is 30% SEN. Can be higher or lower and SEN is a grouped thing of course so a child who is dyslexic with mild but diagnosed ADD may only need a purple overlay and have great behaviour management in-class but will be a SEN child. It's a very broad spectrum.

christinarossetti19 I’m not at all worried about my own child’s progress but I just have an issue with the head blaming this group of kids for the school’s failings (it that’s the real issue). Percentage achieving expected standard are average and below average. Progress scores are all negative, with writing at -5.